Farmers who have been waging struggle demanding establishment of a turmeric board besides payment of minimum support price of ₹ 15,000 per quintal for turmeric and ₹3,500 for red jowar staged a massive dharna and rasta roko at Mamdipally Chowrasta, here on Monday.
The rasta roko and ‘maha dharna’ was preceded by an impressive rally by farmers who arrived from various villages in the revenue division.
The agitating farmers also did vanta vaarpu (preparation of food and serving) on road as part of their agitation. They resolved to intensify the struggle in novel forms in the days to come.
They wanted the Government to purchase the crop directly from farmers at MSPs as they were getting prices which are below their investment costs. They also sought implementation of the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission to ensure profitable price.
The farmers’ leaders who addressed the gathering said that they were hardly getting ₹ 6,000 per quintal of turmeric and ₹2,500 for red jowar. On the other hand, they were incurring investment costs of ₹1.50 lakh per acre for turmeric and ₹30,000 per acre for red jowar.
Police made elaborate bandobust deploying a large contingent of forces to prevent any untoward incident due to the farmers’ agitation. They took all necessary measures for the smooth flow of vehicular traffic in the town and also on National Highway-44. However, reports reaching here said that following the farmers’ rasta roko at Metpally and Korutla in Jagityal district traffic movement was badly affected.
Meanwhile, farmers’ leaders spoke of filing mass nominations in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections to exert pressure on the government if their problems were not solved by that time.
